January 11, 2005

Digital Music News: the IPod Shuffle

The big digital music news today is the announcement by Apple of the iPod Shuffle.

Note how few controls there are. This little $99 iPod loads about 120 songs, and plays them either in order, or in “shuffle mode”, which is good at assembling random playlists on the fly. There’s also a $149 model with about twice the storage space.

Message of MemoGate to Public: Anchors May Have no Idea Whether They are Reporting Accurately

Many in the public are seeing that four people have been fired for their flawed work in MemoGate, but that Dan Rather has not:

Rather told the head of CBS News, Andrew Heyward, he knew the story was so controversial as to be “radioactive,” according to the report on the story and its failures released Monday by an independent panel.

But what Rather also told the panel and what became a central finding of the review was that he had extreme confidence in Mary Mapes, the award-winning producer who was putting together the Air National Guard story. The powerful alliance of Rather and Mapes helped power the flawed story onto the air, according to the 224-page review of the CBS story by former Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh and Louis D. Boccardi, former president of Associated Press.

As a result, CBS on Monday fired Mapes and asked two other producers and a vice president in its news division to resign.

So Dan was permitted to stay because he wasn’t responsible for the story. He was just reading it.

But page 104 of the MemoGate report quotes CBS News President Andrew Heyward as saying the reverse, NewsMax points out:

The report on the in-house probe claims that Rather had almost no role in checking out the bogus Sept. 8 report on President Bush’s National Guard record, saying that the CBS newsman “does not appear to have participated in any of the vetting sessions or to have even seen the Segment before it was aired.”

But according to CBS News President Andrew Heyward, nothing could be further from the truth.

In a development first covered Tuesday morning by “Fox and Friends” host E.D. Hill, the report says:

“Heyward recalled speaking to Rather on Monday, September 6, and being told that the story was thoroughly vetted. Heyward also told the Panel that Rather said he had not ‘been involved in this much checking on a story since Watergate.’

So the unfortunate side-effect of the report’s defense of Dan Rather is to tell the public that news anchors frequently have no idea at all whether what they’re saying is correct.

Mapes Still Tries to Pull the Wool Over Peoples’ Eyes on Rathergate Memos

Charles Johnson quotes producer Mary Mapes’ lame excuses regarding Memogate:

Much has been made about the fact that these documents are photocopies and therefore cannot be trusted, but decades of investigative reporting have relied on just such copies of memos, documents and notes. In vetting these documents, we did not have ink to analyze, original signatures to compare, or paper to date. We did have context and corroboration and believed, as many journalists have before and after our story, that authenticity is not limited to original documents. Photocopies are often a basis for verified stories.

It’s astonishing that Mapes can pretend that the only objection to the documents is that they were photocopies. The fact that they used technology that was unavailable until the personal computer era is something she glosses over.

Yet the MemoGate report itself discusses the technology issues:

...[Document Examiner Emily] Will told the Panel that she had enough time with Mapes on the telephone to review the signature discrepancies reflected in her e-mail in addition to the potential problems she had noticed in the typography of the two documents. Will referred to the two documents in her contemporaneous notes as Q1 (the August 1, 1972 memorandum) and Q2 (the June 24, 1973 memorandum):

1. Is there suppose [sic] to be a letterhead? Note differences in th in 111 th in top line of letterhead and note lack of third line in Q2 letterhead.
2. Q2 has superscript th
3. Has the general appearance of a proportional spaced and proportional width font
4. Q2 has a comma in the date, which is not found in Q1 or any of the knowns Q2 does NOT look like a military document . . .

Will told the Panel that she informed Mapes that she wanted more documents for comparison and analysis, and Mapes told her that she would send them. Will was never sent any more documents.

This is telling:

Will also recalled that, when she started to discuss concerns regarding the content of the documents, Mapes cut her off. ... Mapes told Miller that she just wanted Will to look at the signature. Will told the Panel she regarded examining content to be part of her job in assessing a documents authenticity.

Mapes forbade Miller to look at anything in the document other than the signature. What producer who really wanted correct document authentication to be conducted would do that?

...Based on Wills recollection and her notes, it appears that Will raised the issue of proportional spacing with Mapes on Sunday. This topic would receive substantial attention in the Aftermath of the broadcast of the Segment. The Panel finds it significant that Mapes did not focus on this criticism and later would alert 60 Minutes Wednesday management only to the issue of the superscript th. (Page 84-85)

The Panel busts Mapes for hiding concerns regarding the technology used in the documents, from 60 Minutes Wednesday. Yet in her excuse as quoted above, Mapes pretends there were no such concerns.


Update 1-1-05—From Wizbang:

At some point you have to wonder what planet [Mapes] is on. She is clearly a member of the moonbat left. Anyone who has read the report – or even the parts I’ve posted here – knows she is either lying or sadly delusional. It really calls into question every piece she has ever done for CBS.